The book was a modest bestseller in its print version, going through four editions. It was recently made into an independent film by producer Robert D. Weinbach. The film's release is not yet scheduled, but should be sometime this year.

I wrote Shiver under my old pen name Brian Harper. Another book from my Brian Harper days, Mortal Pursuit, is currently on sale in both Kindle and Nook formats for 99 cents.

Since I'm flogging my ebooks, I'll add that Riptide, a suspense novel about a woman who discovers a family connection with Jack the Ripper, is available as a Nook and a Kindle for 99 cents.

A recent Irish study of deathbed visions adds more cases to the database. One interesting element of the study is a comparison of patients who were heavily medicated and/or suffering a fever with those who weren't.

One common sense explanation may be that the visions are drug- or fever-induced hallucinations. But 68 per cent of respondents agreed, or strongly agreed, that DBE have different qualities from such hallucinations.

[Researcher Una] MacConville says there appears to be a difference in the quality of the visions: they appear with greater clarity, and they are experienced as meaningful, with significant associations, rather than random, as they would be in drug-induced cases.

An earlier study also indicated that patients experiencing deathbed phenomena are usually calm and composed. In contrast, drug- or fever-induced hallucinations can be disturbing and frightening, with other symptoms of drug-induced toxicity and high temperature present as well.

It's good to see that empirical investigations into this topic are continuing.

Lately I’ve been reading Michael Grosso’s 1986 book The Final Choice: Playing the Survival Game. It’s an interesting overview of psi phenomena, afterlife evidence, and millenarian predictions. Grosso makes an effort to tie together several different strands of thought and ends up with an intriguing holistic interpretation.

One section that I found particularly worthwhile was Chapter 3, “Sketch of a Science of Transcendence,” in which Grosso makes the case for what has been called Mind at Large.

He begins by suggesting that psi exists mainly to help us navigate a nonphysical realm, and not to navigate the space-time universe:

If the function of psi is essentially otherworldly, then we need not be surprised how transient and marginal an effect we find it to be in this world. In this world, we normally rely upon the sensory-motor system for engaging the environment. Despite some evidence that occasionally psi serves the needs of the organism -- sometimes without conscious awareness -- its day-to-day survival value in the terrestrial struggle for existence seems to be slight by comparison with our bodily senses....

Gardner Murphy, the great American psychologist, wondered why, on Darwinian principles, living organisms did not develop increasing psi ability, which would obviously be of great survival value. For instance, an animal could escape a predator. If psi ability were genetically coded, moreover, we would expect natural selection to work toward a growing incidence of psi function, at least among some favored species. But there is no evidence of psi becoming a biologically stronger function....

Murphy suggests that there are two modes in which an organism is capable of functioning: one, the sensory mode, in space and time; another, the psi mode, independently of time of space and time. In the deeper psi mode, the paranormal is the normal, but this could only be a mode in which the sensory mode were suspended or, as in death, superseded. The psi that appears fitfully and elusively in the terrestrial environment would be the essential mediator of the transcendent environment.

In other words, psi comes into its own in the postmortem phase of existence. It is therefore a pre-adaptive function with limited utility during the stage of biological life. A little later, Grosso expands on the idea of pre-adaptation, defined as:

... the emergence of structures before they are used.... Consider, for instance, the mesosaurs which apparently never left the water, showing that the development of the amniote egg was not an adaptation for living on land but emerged before there was any need for it.... [Other examples are cited.] Indeed, as one of the great experts on the biology of amphibians, G. Kingsley Noble, says: "A detailed analysis of the many 'marvelous adaptations' in the Amphibia will reveal ... that in most cases the modification arose before the function."

If such pre-adaptations are genuine, we could hardly account for them by natural selection. They look rather like expressions of a plan, as if they were produced for the sake of future use. Now our problem has been to account for psi ability in terms of evolution. What I wish to propose is that we think of psi ability as a pre-adaptive "structure" or "organ." Of course, these latter terms cannot be taken literally, since there is no evidence that psi functioning is anatomically based; thus only by analogy may we speak of psychic structures or organs.

As a side note, I would point out that many biologists argue that these modifications do serve a function when they are introduced, even if it is not the function they later acquire. For instance, the feathers of the archaeopteryx, not used for flying, may have been used to sweep up insects as food. The idea of pre-adaptation is controversial and may be invalid; the jury is still out.

In any case, pre-adaptation is not the only challenge to the natural selection theory as a comprehensive explanation of biological development. Grosso writes:

The English biologist, John Randall, has made several bold and comprehensive hypotheses concerning the parapsychology of life. Randall's overall strategy is as follows: first, he reviews problems in biological theory which Darwinian orthodoxy cannot handle. Second, experimental evidence is cited for the influence of psi on living systems. Third, a transcendent side factor -- Randall calls it Mind at Large -- is advanced as a hypothesis to account for aspects of life neglected by the orthodox view.

The possible role of psi in evolution is indicated when we consider that mutations may arise from single microphysical events. In the words of von Bertalanffy: "As can be shown by mathematical analysis of the experiments, one single hit into the sensitive zone of the gene suffices to cause a mutation. Therefore, the induction of mutations is subject to the statistical law of microphysics." This increases the theoretical plausibility of psi-induced mutation; psi might act on the "sensitive zones" in a gene.

Grosso, following Randall, summarizes the intractable problems in biology as the origin of life (abiogenesis) and the origin of species (macroevolution). Abiogenesis is simply not understood; so far, all attempts at formulating a theory have failed. (See Robert Shapiro’s book Origins.) Macroevolution arguably is not explained by neo-Darwinism, which accounts for relatively minor variations (microevolution) but not for wholesale changes requiring a large number of favorable mutations that occur almost simultaneously.

Grosso goes on:

Given the gaps in mechanistic biology and the experimental evidence that psi influences living systems, Randall states: "There is at least a possibility that parapsychology has discovered the missing factor needed to construct a general theory of life." Randall outlines several postulates for a general theory of life. The most fundamental and radical is that of a psi-factor he calls Mind at Large. Mind at Large is the transpersonal aspect of mind; it is distinct from but able to interact with matter. Although our individual minds are constantly interacting with their own bodies, Mind at Large does not normally interact with matter. Normally, matter behaves in accord with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Though living organisms are self-regulating on a routine basis, Mind at Large intervenes a critical junctures: for instance, the origin of life, the development of new and higher species, instances of "paranormal" healing and in other circumstances where we observe psi at work. For Randall, this hypothesis is a kind of neo-vitalism empirically backed by the data of parapsychology ...

Randall ... makes it clear that Mind that Large is not identical with the traditional Western idea of God, which implies perfection. Randall's transcendent mind is more like an experimental artist-God who makes mistakes and scratches them out, discovering what it creates as it goes along. At least we can say that Mind that Large is mind; and minds are the kinds of process said to be conscious and to have purpose and intelligence. While it would no doubt be a mistake to anthropomorphize this Mind Factor and suppose that its mode of consciousness, purpose and intelligence were merely an enlarged replica of our own, we may take some comfort in the thought that being mental, it may be possible to engage Mind at Large in some type of meaningful dialogue.

... if psi is a reality, why is it not exploited in the struggle for existence? If Randall is right, the answer is that organisms, though originally expressive of psi-mediated information, normally work like self-regulating machines. Psi may indeed come into play in the struggle for existence under special circumstances. But its overall function, if I understand Randall, is to direct and oversee the upward thrust of the evolutionary process and to maintain the total balance and ecology of life....

The function of psi may be to mediate the origin, evolution and regulation of life, though the sheer maintenance of life, the conservative mechanisms, would be governed by the laws of chemistry and physics. Since the mass of observable life processes is conservative, mechanists can suppose they hold the key to all of life, as long as they ignore the discontinuities, the puzzles of creativity and the paranormal.

From here, Grosso transitions to the issue of life after death.

Puzzling survival data complement puzzling data about the origin and evolution of life. Mechanism fails to account for certain features of the terminal phase of biological existence, just as it fails to account for certain features of the originating phases of biological existence. Psi-oriented theories of life concur in referring to an overall plan, template, original impetus and directedness of life. The survival hypothesis calls attention to the farthermost reach of an overall plan and directedness: the struggle of life to become radically independent of the physical environment as such.

This struggle reaches its climax when the organism dies. In the survival hypothesis, death is simply a transition to a new nonphysical environment, and it is this environment in which psi will come into its own. In this sense, psi is a pre-adaptive function, one that comes pre-installed but achieves its full utility only after death. Grosso:

My guess is that psi ability is oriented toward adaptation of a new ecological environment, an environment that Telhard de Chardin christened the Noosphere....

At the ... postmortem layer of the Noosphere, the purely noogenetic component of organisms, now extricated from the machinery of the physical world, would rely wholly on psi, the pre-adaptive "organ" or function now essential for a new mind-dependent ecology. This particular view of the role of psi in nature is compatible with the pre-adaptive nature of psi in our ordinary terrestrial existence, the fact that we don't need it to survive as biological organisms. It would also account for survival data now understood as reflecting interactions with the postmortem "layer" of the Noosphere. The present hypothesis might also explain why certain types of behavior are psi-conducive, that is, the inverse of behaviors oriented toward survival in the biosphere....

Living organisms are normally self-regulating and have efficient sensory-motor equipment for coping with the terrestrial environment. An unusual increase of psi capacity would disrupt routine performance. It is easy to imagine how a sudden influx of psi would disoriented organism. Too much information can be as confusing as too little.

The confusion would extend further than the individual. If there is a master plan or cosmic intelligence acting upon the biosphere, it probably wouldn't permit the untrammeled use of psi among living organisms. Untrammeled psi would wreak havoc on the ecological system. For instance, if large numbers of animals could use psi to escape their predators, the great food chain of natural being would be broken.... The suggestion, then, is that restraints upon psi ability are built into the ecological system, which explains the elusive, marginal, unharnessable and doggedly unlearnable character of psi. Yet psi does erupt into terrestrial experience. But under what conditions? If there is anything to our hypothesis, those conditions are apt to be transbiological. Conditions disruptive of normal biological functioning that reduced attention to life might tend to release restraints on side ability. The most dramatic instance of this discerption from biological functioning is being near death.

Hence the reports of near-death experiences, and the efforts of mystical ascetics to overcome the body’s natural demands for food, sex, and pleasure in order to bring on a kind of voluntary near-death state. Grosso oberves that:

... the compulsion to survive as a bodily organism apparently blocks our inlets to transcendent psi. Most researchers agree that excessive striving and egocentric effort tighten the filter and squeeze off access to our psi-potential. We have heard similar things from spiritual teachers: he who struggles to save his life will lose it; he who is willing to give it up for the sake of God or the Higher Cause may save it.

The author sums up:

The creative psi factor, Mind at Large, the transcendent field we postulate would (1) account for the origin and evolution of life and (2) explain, in a peculiar sense, the data of spiritual experiences....

The hypothesis of transcendence will also (3) cover data indicative of postmortem survival. We would now assume that some survival data -- hauntings and apparitions, mediumistic phenomena, reincarnation memories -- express genuine interactions with inhabitants of Minded Large. Finally, psi would (4) make sense as a pre-adaptive function destined to unfold truly in the postmortem Noosphere.

There can be no single argument or crucial experiment to decide if this synoptic view is correct. I recommend it as a way of looking at several sets of problematic phenomena and as an incentive to further survival research.

If you use Netflix streaming video, you may be interested in watching 2010: The Year We Make Contact, the sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey. I just noticed that this is available for streaming. Usually the availability of streaming videos lasts for only a limited time.

Though overshadowed by its groundbreaking predecessor, 2010 is an interesting film in its own right. Plotwise, it is much less murky than 2001, and some of its themes and content are surprisingly relevant to the subjects explored on this blog. In particular, the scene where Dave Bowman appears to his ex-wife ties in rather neatly with the whole idea of shedding the ego after death.

It's also a good example of visual effects in the pre-CG era, when spaceships were depicted by finely crafted miniature models. And the art design is quite good - check out the dolphin pool integrated into Roy Scheider's house.

Not a perfect film by any means, but an interesting one to watch if you have access to Netflix's streaming library. Certainly the best work I've seen from director Peter Hyams, with good performances bya skilled cast. Plus, it's kind of neat to see what the year 2010 looked like from the vantage point of the 1980s.

There's been an interesting little discussion on the comments thread of a previous post about the nature of reality - specifically, why there has to be pain and suffering in the world. If there's a higher reality, and our earthly lives are part of a plan, then why does so much unpleasantness have to be part of the plan? Couldn't the higher-ups have worked it out better? Are they sadists? Are they indifferent? Or are there no higher-ups, only the random interplay of physical forces?

Needless to say, such questions are not new. Many learned books have been written on the subject, including one by C.S. Lewis whose title I've stolen for this post. I'm not sure any of these books have provided a completely satisfactory answer. And I certainly don't expect to do any better. I find it challenging just to balance my checkbook, so working out the ultimate meaning and hidden purposes of the universe is a bit beyond me. Nevertheless, I'll offer a few tidbits for thought.

First, it's possible to overstate the problem. There is a lot of suffering in the world, as recent events in Japan and the Middle East have reminded us. But it's not all suffering. Many people live rather pleasant lives. You can find some people who seem to breeze through life - people who've never been seriously ill, or desperately poor, or irreparably heartbroken. There may be more such people than we think. Remember that an airplane crash is news, but an on-time landing is not. Lives of quiet contentment don't get reported. They don't make good drama, so they're rarely the subject of books, movies, TV shows, or even popular songs. In many ways, people in the developed world today enjoy lives that are easier, safer, and materially better than ever before in history. An average middle-class person in an industrialized democracy takes for granted a standard of living that would have been inconceivable to Louis XIV or Nero or King Solomon. Suffering is real, but so is pleasure.

Second, much of the suffering that people do endure is a direct or indirect result of human vices. This is obvious in instances like the Holocaust, but there are more subtle examples as well. Take the problem of famine in the developing world. Though it is often glibly attributed to overpopulation, the truth is that a great deal of this famine is the result of autocratic political systems that have hampered economic development - or even, in some cases, of deliberate attempts by a government to starve some of its own people. A ruler aligned with one tribe may decide to exterminate a rival tribe by withholding food shipments to that region. This kind of thing is not uncommon, and it has cost millions of lives.

Governments are not the only culprits. We can add examples of capitalist malfeasance. Take the sorry lot of 19th-century coal miners, who were trapped in dangerous, low-paying jobs, unable to unionize because paid thugs would kill any union organizers; the miners were paid in company scrip which could be used only at the company store, where prices were artificially inflated to ensure that every dime they made went right back into the bosses' pockets. With no cash, they had no options, no way out; they were effectively stuck in a miserable, degrading existence, often dying in cave-ins or from black lung disease. Their suffering was the result of other people's greed and callousness.

And of course there are common criminals, who inflict pain on a smaller scale. How many people have lost loved ones to street violence?

Moreover, a not-insignificant portion of suffering comes from people's own vices or bad choices. There are people who seem to do everything possible to sabotage themselves - blowing their income on drink or drugs, choosing a life of crime that repeatedly puts them in prison, or simply alienating their family and friends so they end up alone. Their pain is real, but they themselves are responsible for it.

If we were to subtract all the pain in the world that results from human actions, the sum total of pain would be much smaller than it is. It may not be quite fair to blame the universe, or the powers that be, for consequences that stem from the failings of the human race itself.

Third, we ought to recognize that some kinds of suffering can come down to a matter of perspective. There are people who are cheerful and upbeat in almost any situation, and other people who never have a good word to say, no matter what their circumstances. One person remains happy and optimistic even in the case of grave financial setbacks, while another person continues to grouse and whine after winning the lottery. Some people are just temperamentally unsuited to happiness, or perhaps they are only happy when they are most convinced that they are unhappy!

Having said that, I can't deny that there is real suffering in the world that can't be wished away or explained as the result of human error. There may be less of it than the nightly news would suggest, but it's still there. Through no fault of their own, and through no fault of anyone else, some people end up in a world of hurt. It's probably these people who are foremost in our minds when we worry about the problem of pain. A typical tack - one I've taken myself - is to say, "Try telling someone at Auschwitz, or someone in the throes of a painful, untreatable disease, that it's all part of a larger plan." And of course there's a lot of truth in that. Nearly anyone in those circumstances would reject the supposed comfort that such "spiritual" pontification is meant to provide.

I wonder, though, if those are really the best examples. It seems to me that nothing - absolutely nothing - could be said to such people that would comfort them or alleviate their misery. This doesn't mean such words of comfort are therefore empty. It only means that people in extremis are in no position to listen.

Consider a woman in childbirth, racked by labor pains. If you said to her, "The pain you're experiencing is transient and will seem unimportant once your child is safely delivered," she would probably tell you to shut your cake hole. Nevertheless, your statement is true. As soon as the baby is born and she is cradling it in her arms, the pain of delivery will recede from memory like a bad dream, and the outcome will have made her suffering seem worthwhile. If this were not true, no woman would ever choose to have a second child, or a third, or a fourth.

I think it is also true, as a general rule, that in human life there is no gain without pain. Anyone who has labored on a long and difficult undertaking will tell you that the hardships he faced drove him to greater heights of creativity, endurance, or self-understanding; the struggle brought out the best in him. There's a reason why Irving Stone chose the title The Agony and the Ecstasy when telling the story of Michelangelo. Great achievements in art, literature, science, industry, and other fields are almost always midwifed by pain and suffering. The hack writer may bang out 10,000 words a day without strain, but the literary genius fights many battles - mostly internal and unrecognized by the world - to put his vision on the page. Look at the reams of notes and multiple drafts prepared by Dostoevsky when he was writing The Brothers Karamazov, or the tormented letters and diary notes penned by Tolstoy as he struggled with Anna Karenina.

Perhaps more important, spiritual development seems to require a certain amount of hardship. There may be a reason why ascetics starve themselves, take a vow of silence, or take a whip to their own backs. Less dramatically, a spiritual renewal can often be stimulated by a midlife crisis - a dawning sense that one's life is unsatisfactory, that one's worldview is incomplete, and that a new direction is required. There's nothing fun about a midlife crisis, but people often emerge from it with a greater sense of spiritual awareness. No pain, no gain.

All of this is obvious enough, but someone might still ask, "Why? Why does the world have to be this way? It may be true that pain often leads to spiritual growth or personal achievement, but why were things set up like that in the first place? Why couldn't life have been designed to be fun and easy? For that matter, why should we need to learn spiritual lessons at all? Why couldn't we be created with all of our spiritual understanding already in place? Or if our ultimate purpose is to become like God, why were we ever separated from God?"

Those are good questions. And as I said above, I don't have the answers. I don't know why things are the way they are. And frankly it would surprise me if I did know. Remember, I am challenged by the prospect of balancing my checkbook. Do I really think I have the intellectual capacity to comprehend the ultimate plan behind all of reality? If you take your dog to the vet, does he understand why he gets poked with needles? Could you explain it to him? And yet there is a purpose, a good reason, for the poking. The dog's mind simply can't grasp it. Well, in relation to the cosmic Mind that gives rise to physical reality, my own mind is not even equivalent to a dog's. Maybe, if I'm lucky, its equivalent to the mind of a flea. More likely, an amoeba.

It seems to me that expecting to understand the whole picture is simply asking too much of our limited human capacities. I would be skeptical of any theory that I or anyone else might come up with that claimed to explain "everything." Groucho Marx famously said he wouldn't join any club that would have him as a member. In a similar vein, I would say I wouldn't endorse any theory of ultimate reality that could be encapsulated by my intellect. The very fact that I could think of it or understand it would strongly suggest to me that it couldn't be true, or at least couldn't be the whole truth.

I guess I end up in the same position as the author of the Book of Job. After making the long-suffering Job hurl question after question at his deity, the author finally allows God to speak (at 38:1). But God doesn't really answer the questions. He simply tells Job that, as a puny mortal, Job cannot possibly understand the ultimate purposes and higher meaning of life. Though couched in beautiful poetry, this reply is intellectually unsatisfying. But it may be the only reply that's possible.

A team of scientists claims to have discovered the legendary sunken city of Atlantis off the coast of Spain. What makes the discovery oddly topical is that the city in question appears to have been wiped out by a tsunami.

Is it really Atlantis, or just hype for an upcoming National Geographic special? I have no idea, but it's the first enjoyable news I've seen today.

One afternoon three decades ago, when I was in college, I set off on a drive through the back roads of Connecticut. This was before GPS, even before cell phones. I had a map with me, but it wasn't very good. The roads were not well marked, and I was unfamiliar with the area. The upshot is that I got hopelessly lost and, as the day wore on, I became increasingly frustrated. Finally I started raging in the car, cursing out the lousy map and the poor signage and the impenetrable maze of streets.

But while I was raging, I was also aware of another part of myself, curiously detached and nonjudgmental, that said very coolly, in a matter-of-fact way, "He's really losing it, isn't he?" (Or something to that effect.)

This may have been my first conscious apprehension of the witness - the part of us that watches, takes note, and learns, but doesn't react or condemn.

When I calmed down, I thought about that strange feeling of bifurcation - of watching myself from outside myself. Later I learned that psychologists call it dissociation. But affixing a label to something doesn't explain it, and I was left wondering what it was. A defense mechanism, as psychology maintains? Or something more?

These days I think the witness is the closest most of us come, at least in our normal waking life, to our higher self. It's an egoless state - that's why there is no judging or reacting, merely calm appraisal. We access the witness when our normal ego defenses are down - either because we have entered an altered state of consciousness through meditation or reverie, or, conversely, because we are so worked up about something that our habitual methods of self-control start to break down.

I've noticed another thing about this mysterious witness. As I grow older, I find that my response to events is increasingly coming in line with that of the witness. In other words, I overreact less often, and I stand back and observe the situation with detachment more often. I'm not saying I never overreact - I know I do, and there are specific issues that will predictably press my buttons - but, I think, I don't overreact quite as frequently as I used to.

Studies have shown that most people grow happier as they get older, and that septuagenarians and octogenarians are the happiest age groups. This runs counter to the worship of all things youthful that defines our culture, yet it makes a certain amount of sense. With age comes (in many cases, though not always) a retreat of the ego; and the space it leaves behind seems to make room for the witness. And the witness is stoic, accepting, uncritical, peaceful. A person who self-identifies with the ego is bound to find life tempestuous and rough - "life's fitful fever," as Shakespeare put it; a person who self-identifies with the witness will find life easier to take.

Furthermore, I suspect that in most cases the "self" that continues after death is essentially the witness, with the ego minimized or sloughed off altogether. People who self-identify with the ego so strongly that they have drowned out the voice of the witness entirely may find the ego persisting for a while, and perhaps some of them are what spiritualists call earthbound spirits, stuck (for a time) at a low level of development. But for people of even modest spiritual attainments, people who haven’t shut out the witness altogether - in other words, for most people - the transition to an afterlife state probably involves discarding most or all ego-based thinking, and becoming one with the witness. Possibly this does not happen instantly, which is why it is not consistently reported by near-death experiencers; it seems to happen as a result of the life review, the encounter with a Being of Light (which may be an exteriorized perception of the witness), and perhaps a prolonged state of restful healing.

If this speculation is in any way correct, then achieving a high degree of self-identification with the witness is the best way to bring us close to "heaven on earth," and should smooth the transition to the next life. Perhaps this is why sages and spiritual masters of all traditions have emphasized the need to minimize the ego and enlarge the witness' s sphere of influence.

Maybe it's the voice of the witness that we hear in other sayings attributed to Jesus (and to his mentor, John). This one, for instance, seems to derive straight from the witness:

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. [Matthew 11:29-30]

After seeing The Social Network, I'm starting to feel like I sold my soul to the devil just by signing up for Facebook. On the other hand, it does seem to have boosted sales of my ebooks. So on the negative side, there's the prospect of eternal damnation, but on the plus side, there are a few more bucks in my bank account.